Edgar Maass

Edgar WA Maass (born October 4, 1896 in Hamburg , † January 6, 1964 in Paterson , New Jersey , United States ) was a German chemist and writer who was best known for novels from the First World War as well as historical and biographical novels.

Life

Maass was the son of the businessman Wilhelm Maass and his wife Martha Anna Moje. His younger brothers were the later writers Waldemar and Joachim Maass . After graduating from high school and participating in the First World War , he first studied medicine at the University of Rostock and completed this course in 1921 with a doctorate with a dissertation on the subject of the electrolytic treatment of gonorrhea in men according to the method of Charles Russ . He then studied chemistry at the technical universities of Hanover and Munich and completed his training in 1924 with a doctorate. Ing. From.

After working as a chemist first in Munich and Leipzig and then between 1926 and 1934 in the United States, he began his writing career in the mid-1930s with novels such as Verdun (1936). During this time he belonged with his brother as well as Martin Beheim-Schwarzbach , Friedo Lampe and Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind to a group that met in the Berlin house of the Jewish doctor and patron Lothar Luft.

In 1938 he finally emigrated to the USA and lived there until his death. In the following years he wrote numerous other novels with historical-biographical topics such as The Great Fire (1939) about the Hamburg fire in May 1842, The Queen's Doctor (1950) and Imperial Venus (1952). His works have been translated into numerous languages such as Danish , English , Italian , Dutch , Spanish and Czech .

more publishments

• November battle , Oldenburg 1935
• The order , narration, Oldenburg 1936
• Werdelust , Berlin 1937
• In the fog of time , Berlin 1938
• Lessing , Stuttgart 1938
• The great fire , Berlin 1939
• The dream of Philip the Second , Gütersloh 1954
• Don Pedro and the Devil: A novel from the time of declining knighthood , Hamburg 1954
• The Daubray case , Hamburg 1957
• A lady of rank , Hamburg 1965 (posthumous)

literature

• Uwe Laugwitz:  Maass, Edgar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 597 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Christiaan Janssen: Demarcation and adaptation: German culture between 1930 and 1945 as reflected in the units “Det Duitse Boek” and “De Wegschaal” . 2003, ISBN 3-8309-1335-4 , pp. 129, 131, 141 and 142 ( excerpts from Google Books )
• Meyers Großes Personenlexikon , Mannheim 1968, p. 832
• Bertelsmann Universal Lexikon , Volume 11, Gütersloh 1990, p. 140
• Edgard Maass , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 09/1964 of February 17, 1964, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)

Web links and sources

• Literature by and about Edgar Maass in the catalog of the German National Library
• DER SPIEGEL (Announcement of Death, No. 3/1964)